Ricky Riccardi
Appearances
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And even in his teenage years, when he finally starts taking music seriously and getting more and more gigs, he said it was a miracle he didn't die at these honky-tonks because, you know, every night there would be a gunfight, bullets going right past him. And he said that, you know, the bouncer, his name was Oscar Slippers Johnson, he would protect Armstrong, make sure he didn't get hit.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And that's why I think when you read Armstrong's second autobiography, Satchman, My Life in New Orleans, it ends with, with him leaving New Orleans and joining King Oliver, because I think in his mind that was the climax. Everything that followed was gravy because he had survived this childhood that if it was a Hollywood film, somebody would say, well, this is cliche. This is rags to riches.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
You know, nobody could have actually experienced this. But in his case, it's all true. And I found all the facts to back him up.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
He did. And that was one line in his New York Times obituary that I'm sure had a lot of Hello Dolly fans kind of scratching their head. But it's true. And, you know, he told that story, too. He was stabbed in the shoulder by the prostitute that he tried serving as the pimp for. And he showed off that scar for the rest of his life.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
So I also take time in the book to talk about the other figures from the Waif's home, the orphanage where he spent a couple of years and some of these people.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
It was. According to his sister, she said definitively it was their mother's gun.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
I mean, you hate to say something like, you know, that's the best thing that ever happened to him. But honestly, it was the first time that he had structure in his life. You know, the wife's home gave him three meals a day and schooling and taught him trades. But they more importantly, they had a music program run by a man named Peter Davis.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And at first, Davis did not give Armstrong the time of day because he knew kids from Armstrong's neighborhood were nothing but trouble. But he saw that Lewis was always hanging around the band room and eventually started him on the tambourine and the drum and the horn, the bugle, and finally the cornet.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And so on New Year's Eve, when Armstrong was arrested, the newspapers, you know, they referred to him... as Louis Armstrong, comma, old offender. That was his reputation at the age of 12. But then on Decoration Day, the Wavestone Band did a parade through Armstrong's neighborhood, and the newspapers covered that, and all of a sudden it was Louis Armstrong, comma,
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And so the Waves Home made him into a musician. It really showed him this is your way out if you take this seriously. And he did. And even though they had this incredible music program, I followed the stories of some of the other kids there and who ended up, you know, shot in the head at the age of 17, who ended up in Sing Sing, who ended up, you know, a well-known pickpocket. And so, yeah.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
He could have made any wrong choice at any time and have been one of those kids. He could have been gunned down. He could have been arrested. He could, you know, the whole sound of the 20th century could have changed. And we're just lucky that he had some angel on his shoulder or something that kind of helped him through. And we're all the beneficiaries.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
Yeah, that was his main occupation. He had other little odd jobs, but the cold cart, he wrote a song called Cold Cart Blues, and he knew of what he sang because this was something that he probably started.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
I've kind of narrowed it down to probably 10 or 11 years old, and he did it right until, well, excusing the Waif's home exile there for a year and a half, but he did it once again right until the armistice was declared in World War I. And this was back-breaking work.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
You know, he would wake up in the morning and, you know, fill up a cart with coal and then he had a mule and he would go through the neighborhoods, you know, shouting out who needs coal. And, you know, this was tough. And then when he wanted to become a musician at the age of 15, 16 years old, he would get gigs at night.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And so he would come home, he would sleep for maybe an hour, then put on a pair of long pants and then go out and play the cornet maybe until 4 in the morning. sleep one or two hours and do it again. So that's part of his childhood. The Kronofsky family, though, he always gave them credit. He said they treated him like a human being.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And the other benefit of working for the Kronofsky family is their coal wagon delivered coal to the prostitutes in the red light district of New Orleans, which was later known as Storyville. And, you know, African-American kids could not walk around Storyville unless they were with, um, They're white boss. And so Armstrong had Morris Karnofsky and he was his boss there.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
He would stay on the coal cart and Lewis would go around delivering the coal. But this is also the time that the red light district starts bringing in jazz bands. And so this is Armstrong's first time hearing King Oliver and Freddie Keppard and Manuel Perez. And so, you know, there are benefits to this work.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
He always had this way of kind of finding the good in these situations, situations that I think if anybody else had lived them or spent their lives talking about them or writing about them would have come off as horror stories. But Armstrong, he always found a lesson that he learned and internalized. And in his mind, everything he did made him a better person.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
Well, the amazing thing for me is Cornette Chop Suey was the next song recorded after heebie-jeebies. So I always like to make the point that You know, you can name a million great vocalists and a million great instrumentalists and Armstrong's the only person who totally changed the way people sang and he totally changed the way people soloed and played music on their instruments.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And he really does it. on one day, February 26, 1926. But Cornet Chop Suey was kind of his coming out party to show all the tools in his toolbox of what he could do with his cornet. And so it opens with his dazzling, unaccompanied introduction, just letting everybody know, I'm here, I'm the leader. And then the melody, I was just talking to the great multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
We were saying, you can play that melody tonight in the 21st century, and it sounds fresh, it sounds modern. And so that was a melody that he had written two years earlier for But the main part was this stop time solo. And I think trumpet players and trombonists and guitarists and piano players, they all heard that. And they said, wow, that's how you tell a story.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
You know, that's how you really solo. And it's not just arpeggios. It's not just, you know, just playing quick or whatever this technical stuff. It's actually got a beginning, middle and an end. And so Cornet Chop Suey was analyzed as this masterpiece of improvisation music.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
Until the 1990s, when it was discovered that Armstrong had copyrighted the song two years earlier and he had written down the whole solo note for note. And then in the 1950s, when that record was played for some of his old New Orleans contemporaries, they all said, oh, my goodness, that's Buddy Petit. And Buddy Petit was a cornet player that Armstrong heard and admired when he was a kid.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
But Buddy Petit never recorded it. He died in 1931, left behind no record. And so to me, Cornet Chop Suey is on surface level. You'll hear it. You know, it's still it sounds modern and fresh and we can still learn a lot from it.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
I mean, for me, this is kind of everything you need to know about Louis Armstrong in three minutes. Actually, it's probably everything you need to know about him in the first 13 seconds, because that unaccompanied opening trumpet cadenza, people are still learning it.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
But to me, it's also Armstrong serious about his craft, writing down the melody, writing down the solo, showing off the influence of a musician who never got to record and, you know, simultaneously forecasting the shape of jazz to come, but also really leaning into his New Orleans roots.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
Sure. So stop time, you know, usually you get the rhythm section is hitting a The beats on every beat, every quarter note, yeah, bum, bum, bum, bum. Well, stop time, they all just focus on the first beat. So it's like one, two, three, four. They hit one note, one accent, and that just lets Lewis, he's out there, you know, without a parachute.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
He just has to play without that chugging, swinging rhythm section behind him. They're just accenting the first beat of every measure. And it's hard to do that because, you know, you could lose your time. You could lose your equilibrium, the band. They also have to hit that first beat all together on the nose. And it's become a kind of a lost art form in certain circles.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
But few did it better than the Hot Five.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
I mean, during the height of the pandemic, there was a hashtag Louis Armstrong West End Blues Challenge, and they had musicians around the world trying to nail that cadenza. But then the rest of the recording... The way he plays the melody, the way he scat sings, the operatic trumpet playing at the ending.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
It was really his announcement to the world that he is here, he has arrived, and nothing will ever be the same.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
His doctor, Gary Zucker, basically told him, all right, you can do the gig, but we're going to turn your hotel room basically into a triage at a hospital. And every night before and after each show, I will come in. I'll do your blood pressure. I'll test your vitals. As the gig went on, Lewis started suffering from heart failure.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And Dr. Zucker said, you know, we'll try to keep the heart failure at bay. But he knew he wasn't going to stop him. He tried stopping him, but he said Armstrong almost got into a possessed state. And he said, Doc, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn. The people are waiting for me. I can't let them down.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
So Armstrong made it through the entire Waldorf gig, two shows a night for two weeks. And two days later, he had a major heart attack, ended up in the hospital for almost eight weeks and ended up passing away in July of 71. So it really is his last stand. And it really is also, to me, him going out on his shield.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And he probably could have lived another five, 10 years if he could just put the horn down, retire, relax. He had money. He had a house that was paid off. He had his wife. He had his tapes. He had everything he wanted in Corona Queens, but he needed to be out there performing for his fans. He knew, even his old friend, the drummer Zutty Singleton, said that, you know, don't let anybody fool you.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
He knew the end was near, but I think he was satisfied that he had finished the gig and was still on his feet at the end.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
Well, he takes a three-chorus solo. It's his longest solo on record. And to me, he opens off, I kind of jokingly refer to it as Cantor Louis Armstrong. It's like, you know, this minor keyed song, and he opens almost like he's blowing the shofar. And so, you know, the influence of the Kronofsky family is immediately right there. Then there's comedy.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
You know, people always said, you know, well, Armstrong can mug and fool around. But when he picked up the horn, that's when he was serious. Well, to an extent, but he was also very funny on the trumpet. And so there was something called the Streets of Cairo, which is interesting. known as the Snake Charmer song. And so he takes that and turns it into a musical quote.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And of course, you know, the hip hop world now, they call it sampling, but this was something Armstrong brought to the jazz world of taking a preexisting melody and incorporating it into his improvisation. And it's funny, but he also really makes a meal out of it, stretching it out and everything. Meanwhile, the band in the background, they turn
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
They're backing into kind of a Spanish rhythm, what Jelly Roll Morton called the Spanish tinge. And, of course, that's another ingredient of the New Orleans sound, the Cuban influence, Afro-Cuban influence, all that. So all these different things, comedy, the Jewish influence, New Orleans influence, everything that he had heard is all coming together.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And eventually it all builds to this climax where he is wailing in the upper register. High notes, opera, Enrico Caruso, everything he learned from buying opera records as a teenager, it's all coming out of his trumpet. And I make the point that this three-chorus solo, the way it builds and builds and builds, it starts off so slow and quiet, and by the end, it's like this roof-shaking climax.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
That's the blueprint for all kind of extended solos. And in the book, I just use guitarists, but Jimmy Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, it's the blueprint. It doesn't even have to be jazz. Anybody who is improvising, taking a solo, starting off quietly, building and building and building, and boom, here's the big high-note ending. they're all taking a page out of tight like this.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
So to me, this is Louis Armstrong's life up to 1928 in three minutes.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
I mean, to me, they're all gems. But the big takeaway is that what you see is what you got. You know, the Armstrong who had the time of his life and always said he was there in the cause of happiness on stage. He's that guy offstage. He is laughing the loudest and telling the dirtiest jokes. And he's, you know, so accessible with his friends and with his family and everything.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
with fans, you know, he had an open door policy and he would sometimes tape record those conversations and, you know, just so sweet, so genuine, so earnest. But at the same time, the tapes also showcase him as a human being. You hear him cursing, you hear him angry, you hear him upset about racism and about the way he was being treated.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And I think that's kind of the big takeaway, the big discovery for me. And I tried getting that into all three books. is that sometime Armstrong is painted as kind of a man-child, like that smiling, eye-rolling persona. People think, well, that's all he was.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
He didn't really know how to navigate the world, and he needed a white manager like Joe Glazer, and he just wanted to make fans happy and smile, and he just was totally kind of ignorant about the situation.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
Oh, my goodness. Yeah, that started early and kind of haunted him for years. And it actually clung to him to the first maybe 10, 20 years after he died. That was a big part of many of the writings about Armstrong. And all of that changed when his archives became available. You know, his archives went to Queens College in 1991.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
the first writers, beginning with Gary Giddens and then all through the 90s and, you know, Winter Marsalis, of course, and the Jazz Lincoln Center tributes and the Ken Burns documentary.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
All of a sudden, once people had access to these tapes and to these journals and to these scrapbooks and his unpublished writings, it was like, oh my goodness, you know, this guy, he was aware, he knew the story and he was street smart. And I think that this book, you know, kind of doing it in backwards fashion the way I did, you realize that what he learned on those streets in New Orleans was
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
Nobody was going to pull the wool over his eyes. He was aware at all times of who he was. He was aware of his talent. He was aware that people wanted him to perform and all this stuff. But he knew how the money worked. He knew how the country worked. He puts his career on the line to tell off President Eisenhower over the way he handled Little Rock.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And so all that stuff is bubbling under the surface. And he did it himself. You know, he was his own archivist. He makes these tapes. He curates his own archive. And I think he realized on a deep level that he could not go on Johnny Carson or Ed Sullivan in 1967 and talk about being black in America and talk about marijuana and talk about all these subjects.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
But he left behind a record of his feelings on all these things. And so now, you know, I've done three books, but I honestly there's enough information. in those archives for 50 more books. And I really feel like he was playing the long game. He knew that one day future historians and musicologists would want to study his life.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
He even said, I quote it in the book, he said, they're going to write about me in the history book someday. And so as long as he was in charge of his own archives, people would have to go to him. And you could agree or disagree with his takeaways, but the key is he is now allowed to speak for himself.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
Yeah. So the next chapter of Armstrong's life was covered in the previous chapter of my previous book, which was called Heart Full of Rhythm, The Big Band Years of Louis Armstrong. Again, my intention was never to do this in reverse chronology, but it actually kind of worked out pretty interestingly.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And Heart Full of Rhythm tells the story of Armstrong becoming the first black pop star and dealing with these Tin Pan Alley songs. And for me, if I... If you ask me to name 10 Armstrong songs, I couldn't do it. Oxford University Press asked me to do that. And I asked them if I can do 20. And we negotiated down to 12 because I couldn't cut anything.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
But if you ask me to name one, it's going to be Stardust, recorded by Armstrong and his orchestra, November 4th, 1931. And Stardust might be the most recorded standard of the 20th century. And I just ask you out there, listen to Bing Crosby's version, listen to Nat King Cole, listen to anybody. And you'll hear Hoagy Carmichael's beautiful melody and Mitchell Parrish's poetic lyrics.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
So the records he makes in the 1920s, which are at the heart of Stomp Off, Let's Go, they were known at the time as race records, records aimed at cities and urban areas and the black community in general. And, you know, a lot of blues and a lot of instrumental jazz. But West End blues wasn't a runaway pop hit.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And it's, you know, one of those songs that will live forever. Then listen to Armstrong and tell me if he doesn't sound like he came from another planet. Because his interpretation is so personal. He totally changes the melody. He rearranges the lyrics. He throws in bits of scat singing asides. And then he picks up the trumpet and, you know, and makes the angels weep, as Gary Giddens once said.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
So to me, Stardust in three minutes. is everything you need to know about Armstrong's impact on pop music of the 20th century. And like I said, it's a perfect next chapter from, you know, the Hot 5 and Hot 7s in New Orleans made him into who he was. And then he took those gifts, shared them with the world, and really changed everything in his path.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
Oh, my pleasure, Terry. This has been an honor. And, you know, I always have to leave my closing phrase, pops is tops.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
You know, that that was still the terrain of Paul Whiteman and Guy Lombardo and band leaders like that. But it did move the needle a little bit. People were buying it. They were listening. They were influenced. And OK Records, Armstrong's label at the time, their head A&R man, his name was Tommy Rockwell,
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
He was the one who kind of had the brainchild, like, man, this Armstrong guy has got something different. If we could just get him to connect with the larger public, you know, he really has a chance to be a star. And so beginning in late 1928, Rockwell starts expanding the sound of Armstrong's band, and he starts simultaneously releasing his recordings as race records and as pop records.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And lo and behold, the pop records were selling. So in 1929... Armstrong comes to New York and begins his reign as a full-blown pop artist for OK, recording things like I Can't Give You Anything But Love and Ain't Misbehavin' and When You're Smiling. And by 1932, he's the biggest selling recording artist in the entire industry.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And so at that point, you know, the race record experiment is over and Louis Armstrong is the first black pop star.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
So to my ears, and also to Johnny St. Cyr, the banjo player, he did corroborate the dropping of the sheet music thing. People have always said that that story was too good to be true. But if you listen carefully, there is a little bit... I don't want to call it panic, but in the first vocal chorus towards the end, Armstrong sings something. It almost sounds like you don't Debo, right?
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
It's kind of gibberish, but in my mind at that point, he might've dropped the lyrics and he didn't quite know what to do next. But this whole concept of using his voice like an instrument is, People remember that he was doing that in his vocal quartet when he was 11, 12 years old. One musician, Norman Mason, remembered him doing that on the riverboats with Fate Marable in 1920.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
Another musician remembered him doing that In New York with Fletcher Henderson in 1924. So this whole concept of wordless vocalizing was something he had done. And Armstrong himself said, you know, these things just come to you in a flash. So he did not spend much time planning. Like, I am going to do this on heebie-jeebies. But in the moment with the sheet of paper on the ground.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
He just launches into this entire chorus completely wordless. And by the end, you know, he's throwing Sweet Mama and things you normally don't hear in 1920s pop music. But if you continue listening to the end of the track, there's a moment where they had worked out a thing where they would play a Charleston beat and everybody would say a line. What you doing with the Hebe's?
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And Kid Ori, the trombone player, he comes in at the wrong time. And even Armstrong himself, he admitted that he thought that they would try it again. But E.A. Fern, who was the producer for OK of this particular recording, He came in and said, we're going to take a chance on this one. And so even with the imperfections and all this stuff, they knew that that vocal had something different.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And Fern was the man that Armstrong gave credit for using the word scat. And in the book, I have a cover of the sheet music from later 1926. It's spelled S-K-A-T. But even though you can find other instances of wordless vocalizing on record before heebie-jeebies, for all intents and purposes, this is the record that really put scat singing on the map.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
Well, to Armstrong, he said that the concept of a trumpet player or any instrumentalist also singing was just – it was a foreign concept at that time. People just didn't do it.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
Either one or the other, exactly. But there was also something about Armstrong where I just think his natural personality, his showmanship, his mugging, his way of putting over a song, especially when he got to New York. I think the Henderson and the men in his band, which kind of fancy themselves as –
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
You know, Harlem Renaissance intellectuals, they kind of look down at that kind of Southern fried performing style. And so Armstrong, he for the rest of his life, he always said Henderson had a million dollar talent in his band, but he missed the boat. And I even called one of the chapters in the book Blessed Assurance, because I think before anybody else, Armstrong was confident.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
in his abilities as a vocalist. He knew it was different and he knew if he only got the chance, you know, people would respond. And here we are, you know, 2025, what a wonderful world just went, you know, certified double platinum in 2024 of a record where he doesn't even play a note of trumpet. So once again, you know, Armstrong kind of has the last laugh.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
He just needed that opportunity to let people hear that distinctive voice of his.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
Another point that he always wanted to stress, you know, because people would say, oh, you know, the trumpet player, that's the genius. You know, the guy singing and that's kind of he's just doing that, you know, just to commercialize himself. And we put these songs over. But no, I have a quote from Arvel Shaw. I said that if Armstrong never picked up the trumpet, he would have been a singer.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
You know, singing was in his blood more than the trumpet. And it was his real first musical foray in New Orleans before he ever picked up a cornet.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
Yeah, this track literally just turned 100 years old. It was recorded in January 1925. And this was Armstrong, the sideman. He goes to New York to join Fletcher Henderson in October 1924. And OK Records and other labels, Columbia, they start using him as just a studio musician. His name is never on the labels, but people respond to the sound of his trumpet.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And this is something he had never really done in New Orleans before, backing up a vocalist. And on some of his early albums,
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
forays into this he would be a little too busy he might play too many notes or you know kind of step on the singer but by the time he got in the studio in January 25 to back the Empress of the Blues he had kind of perfected his approach and even though she's technically the lead artist singing the vocal and he's supposed to be you know the background figure just playing in and around her I consider a duet every one of his statements is so sensitive he is listening to her he is maintaining the mood and
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And, you know, she only gets through W.C. Handy's chorus one time in three minutes, but it is all soul.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
So Armstrong was born in 1901. I won't get into the whole birthday debate. You know, I believe he was born July 4th, 1901, but for reasons that are explained in the book. But either way, he's born 1901, spends his first few years living with his grandmother. But then around the age of five, he moves to the third ward. Liberty and Perdido streets.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
He moves into a tiny flat with his mother and sister. And this neighborhood was so dangerous, it was known as the battlefield. And Armstrong, he spent most of his adult years telling these stories with a little bit of a wink and a smile. And he would talk about Black Benny, you know, the drummer who would fight during the parades.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And he would say, oh, well, my mother, whether or not she was a prostitute, I cannot say. But, you know, she's worked hard and taught us the rudiments. And so for this book, I wanted to keep Armstrong's words in place, but I wanted to dig a little deeper and talk about some of these characters.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
And the deeper I went into police records and newspaper reports, all I can say is it's a miracle he emerged alive because from the time he's five, six, seven years old, he is seeing gunfights and stabbings and there's gamblers and pimps and prostitutes and His mother is arrested almost every year and sent to the house of detention, sometimes three, four weeks.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
Armstrong would have to watch over his baby sister, cooking for her and for him and doing whatever he could to make ends meet. He's working. He's selling newspapers. He's working for the Jewish Karnofsky family. He's doing whatever he can to survive. But the police are there.
Fresh Air
How Louis Armstrong Became The First Black Pop Star
He mentioned the only time he was ever scared in his childhood were the police because they would whip his head and then ask his name later. gets arrested multiple times, the first time at the age of nine for being a dangerous and suspicious character.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
You know, nobody could have actually experienced this. But in his case, it's all true. And I found all the facts to back him up.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
And that was that was one line in his New York Times obituary that I'm sure a lot of Hello Dolly fans kind of scratching their head. But it's true. And, you know, he told that story, too. He was stabbed in the shoulder by the prostitute that he tried serving as the pimp for. And he showed off that scar for the rest of his life.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
So I also take time in the book to talk about the other figures from the Waif's home, the orphanage where he spent a couple of years and some of these stories.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
It was. According to his sister, she said definitively it was their mother's gun.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
He was there a year and a half.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
I mean, you hate to say something like, you know, that's the best thing that ever happened to him. But honestly, it was the first time that he had structure in his life. You know, the wife's home gave him three meals a day and schooling and taught him trades. But more importantly, they had a music program. It was run by a man named Peter Davis.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
And at first, Davis did not give Armstrong the time of day because he knew kids from Armstrong's neighborhood were nothing but trouble. But he saw that Lewis was always hanging around the band room and eventually started him on the tambourine and the drum and the horn, the bugle, and finally the cornet.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
And so on New Year's Eve, when Armstrong was arrested, the newspapers, you know, they referred to him as, As Louis Armstrong, old offender. That was his reputation at the age of 12. But then on Decoration Day, the Waves Home Band did a parade through Armstrong's neighborhood and the newspapers covered that. And all of a sudden it was Louis Armstrong, old offender. leader.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
And so the Waves Home made him into a musician. It really showed him this is your way out if you take this seriously. And he did. And even though they had this incredible music program, I followed the stories of some of the other kids there and who ended up, you know, shot in the head at the age of 17, who ended up in Sing Sing, who ended up, you know, a well-known pickpocket.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
And so he could have made any wrong choice at any time. And have been one of those kids. He could have been gunned down. He could have been arrested. He could, you know, the whole sound of the 20th century could have changed. And we're just lucky that he had some angel on his shoulder or something that kind of helped him through. And we're all the beneficiaries.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
Well, the amazing thing for me is Cornette Chop Suey was the next song recorded after heebie-jeebies. So I always like to make the point that You know, you can name a million great vocalists and a million great instrumentalists and Armstrong's the only person who totally changed the way people sang and he totally changed the way people soloed and played music on their instruments.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
And he really does it. on one day, February 26, 1926. But Cornet Chop Suey was kind of his coming out party to show all the tools in his toolbox of what he could do with his cornet. And so it opens with his dazzling, unaccompanied introduction, just letting everybody know, I'm here, I'm the leader. And then the melody, I was just talking to the great multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
We were saying, you can play that melody tonight in the 21st century, and it sounds fresh, it sounds modern. And so that was a melody that he had written two years earlier, But the main part was this stop time solo. And I think trumpet players and trombonists and guitarists and piano players, they all heard that. And they said, wow, that's how you tell a story.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
You know, that's how you really solo. And it's not just arpeggios. It's not just, you know, just playing quick or whatever. It's technical stuff. It's actually got a beginning, middle and an end. And so Cornet Chop Suey was analyzed as this masterpiece of improvisation.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
Until the 1990s, when it was discovered that Armstrong had copyrighted the song two years earlier and he had written down the whole solo note for note. And then in the 1950s, when that record was played for some of his old New Orleans contemporaries, they all said, oh, my goodness, that's Buddy Petit. And Buddy Petit was a cornet player that Armstrong heard and admired when he was a kid.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
But Buddy Petit never recorded. He died in 1931, left behind no record. And so to me, Cornet Chop Suey is on surface level. You'll hear it. You know, it's still it sounds modern and fresh and we can still learn a lot from it. But to me, it's also Armstrong serious about his craft, writing down the melody, writing down the solo, showing off the influence of a musician who never got to record.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
And, you know, simultaneously forecasting the shape of jazz to come, but also really leaning into his New Orleans roots.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
Sure. So stop time, you know, usually you get the rhythm section is hitting him. The beats on every beat, every quarter note. Well, stop time, they all just focus on the first beat. So it's like one, two, three, four. They hit one note, one accent, and that just lets Lewis, he's out there, you know, without a parachute. He just has to play without that chugging, swinging rhythm section behind him.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
They're just accenting the first beat of every measure. And it's hard to do that because, you know, you could lose your time. You could lose your equilibrium. The band, they also have to hit that first beat all together on the nose. And it's become a kind of a lost art form in certain circles. But few did it better than the Hot Five.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
Oh, my pleasure, Terry. This has been an honor. And, you know, I always have to leave my closing phrase, Pops is tops.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
You can name a million great vocalists and a million great instrumentalists, and Armstrong's the only person who totally changed the way people sang, and he totally changed the way people soloed and played music on their instruments.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
I mean, for me, this is kind of everything you need to know about Louis Armstrong in three minutes. Actually, it's probably everything you need to know about him in the first 13 seconds, because that unaccompanied opening trumpet cadenza, people are still learning it.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
I mean, during the height of the pandemic, there was a hashtag Louis Armstrong West End Blues Challenge, and I had musicians around the world trying to nail that cadenza. But then the rest of the recording, the way he plays the melody, the way he scat sings, the operatic trumpet playing at the ending.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
It was really his announcement to the world that he is here, he has arrived, and nothing will ever be the same.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
So the records he makes in the 1920s, which are at the heart of Stomp Off, Let's Go, they were known at the time as race records, records aimed at cities and urban areas and the black community in general and a lot of blues and a lot of instrumental jazz. But West End Blues wasn't a runaway pop hit.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
You know, that that was still the terrain of Paul Whiteman and Guy Lombardo and band leaders like that. But it did move the needle a little bit. People were buying it. They were listening. They were influenced. And OK Records, Armstrong's label at the time, their head A&R man, his name was Tommy Rockwell,
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
He was the one who kind of had the brainchild, like, man, this Armstrong guy has got something different. If we could just get him to connect with the larger public, you know, he really has a chance to be a star. And so beginning in late 1928, Rockwell starts expanding the sound of Armstrong's band, and he starts simultaneously releasing his recordings as race records and as pop records.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
And lo and behold, the pop records were selling. So in 1929, Armstrong comes to New York and – begins his reign as a full-blown pop artist for OK, recording things like I Can't Give You Anything But Love and Ain't Misbehavin' and When You're Smiling. And by 1932, he's the biggest selling recording artist in the entire industry.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
And so at that point, you know, the race record experiment is over and Louis Armstrong is the first black pop star.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
So to my ears, and also to Johnny St. Cyr, the banjo player, he did corroborate the dropping of the sheet music things. People have always said that that story was too good to be true. But if you listen carefully, there is a little bit, I don't want to call it panic, but in the first vocal chorus towards the end, Armstrong sings something. It almost sounds like you don't debo.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
It's kind of gibberish. But in my mind, at that point, he might have dropped the lyrics and he didn't quite know what to do next. But this whole concept of using his voice like an instrument, people remember that he was doing that in his vocal quartet when he was 11, 12 years old. One musician, Norman Mason, remembered him doing that on the riverboats with Fate Marable in 1920.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
Another musician remembered him doing that In New York with Fletcher Henderson in 1924. So this whole concept of wordless vocalizing was something he had done and Armstrong himself said, you know, these things just come to you in a flash. So he did not spend much time planning like I'm going to do this on heebie-jeebies. But in the moment with the sheet of paper on the ground.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
He just launches into this entire chorus completely wordless. And by the end, you know, he's throwing Sweet Mama and things you normally don't hear in 1920s pop music. But if you continue listening to the end of the track, there's a moment where they had worked out a thing where they would play a Charleston beat and everybody would say a line. What you doing with the Hebe's?
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
And Kid Ori, the trombone player, he comes in at the wrong time. And even Armstrong himself, he admitted that he thought that they would try it again. But E.A. Fern, who was the producer for OK of this particular recording, He came in and said, we're going to take a chance on this one. And so even with the imperfections and all this stuff, they knew that that vocal had something different.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
And Fern was the man that Armstrong gave credit for using the word scat. And in the book, I have a cover of the sheet music from later 1926. It's spelled S-K-A-T. But even though you can find other instances of wordless vocalizing on record before heebie-jeebies, for all intents and purposes, this is the record that really put scat singing on the map.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
Well, to Armstrong, he said that the concept of a trumpet player or any instrumentalist also singing was just a foreign concept at that time. People just didn't do it.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
Either one or the other, exactly. But there was also something about Armstrong where I just think his natural personality, his showmanship, his mugging, his way of putting over a song, especially when he got to New York. I think the Henderson and the men in his band, which kind of fancy themselves as musicians,
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
You know, Harlem Renaissance intellectuals, they kind of look down at that kind of Southern fried performing style. And so Armstrong, he for the rest of his life, he always said Henderson had a million dollar talent in his band, but he missed the boat. And I even called one of the chapters in the book Blessed Assurance, because I think before anybody else, Armstrong was confident.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
in his abilities as a vocalist. He knew it was different and he knew if he only got the chance, you know, people would respond. And here we are, you know, in 2025, what a wonderful world just went, you know, certified double platinum in 2024 of a record where he doesn't even play a note of trumpet. So once again, you know, Armstrong kind of has the last laugh.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
He just needed that opportunity to let people hear that distinctive voice of his.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
Another point that he always wanted to stress, you know, because people would say, oh, you know, the trumpet player, that's the genius. You know, the guy singing and that's kind of he's just doing that, you know, just to commercialize himself and put these songs over. But no, I have a quote from Arvel Shaw. I said that if Armstrong never picked up the trumpet, he would have been a singer.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
You know, singing was in his blood more than the trumpet. And it was his real first musical foray in New Orleans before he ever picked up a cornet.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
So Armstrong was born in 1901. I won't get into the whole birthday debate. You know, I believe he was born July 4th, 1901, but for reasons that are explained in the book. But either way, he's born 1901, spends his first few years living with his grandmother. But then around the age of five, he moves to the third ward. Liberty and Perdido streets.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
He moves into a tiny flat with his mother and sister. And this neighborhood was so dangerous, it was known as the battlefield. And Armstrong, he spent most of his adult years telling these stories with a little bit of a wink and a smile. And he would talk about Black Benny, you know, the drummer who would fight during the parades.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
And he would say, oh, well, my mother, whether or not she was a prostitute, I cannot say. But, you know, she'd worked hard and taught us the rudiments. And so for this book, you know, I wanted to keep Armstrong's words in place, but I wanted to dig a little deeper and talk about some of these characters.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
And the deeper I went into police records and newspaper reports, all I can say is it's a miracle he emerged alive because from the time he's five, six, seven years old, He is seeing, you know, gunfights and stabbings and there's gamblers and pimps and prostitutes. And his mother is arrested almost every year and sent to the house of detention, sometimes three, four weeks.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
Armstrong would have to watch over his baby sister, cooking for her and for him and doing whatever he could to make ends meet. He's working. He's selling newspapers. He's working for the Jewish Karnofsky family. He's doing whatever he can to survive. But the police are there.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
He mentioned the only time he was ever scared in his childhood were the police because they would whip his head and then ask his name later. gets arrested multiple times, the first time at the age of nine for being a dangerous and suspicious character.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
And even in his teenage years, when he finally starts taking music seriously and getting more and more gigs, he said it was a miracle he didn't die at these honky-tonks. Because, you know, every night there would be a gunfight, bullets going right past him. And he said that, you know, the bouncer, his name was Oscar Slippers Johnson, he would protect Armstrong, make sure he didn't get hit.
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Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
And that's why I think when you read Armstrong's second autobiography, Satchman, My Life in New Orleans, it ends with with him leaving New Orleans and joining King Oliver, because I think in his mind that was the climax. Everything that followed was gravy because he had survived this childhood that if it was a Hollywood film, somebody would say, well, this is cliche. This is rags to riches.
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Yeah, I worked in an office for eight years. That's where I got it all from. I was a middle manager. I went to management training seminars where those speakers talked rubbish for two days. Yeah, I worked in an office for seven or eight years.
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Oh, let me think. Let's see. Well, the episode four in series one where we had the guy come in to train people, I remember the first training session I went to, and I remember they did role play, and I remember at the time thinking, this is ridiculous, and it started off, I'd like to complain about my room. Oh, I don't care. Well, you should, you're the manager. Well, go to another hotel then.
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Well, I will. And they went, that's the wrong way to do it. And then they said, okay, now we'll do it the right way to do it. And he comes in and says, I'd like to complain about my room. Oh, I'm very sorry, sir. What's up with it? Oh, it's just dirty. Oh, well, I'll have someone clean it and you can have it for free. Brilliant. It was like as black and white as that.
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
And I remember thinking, I don't know what the moral is. So I quite like spoofing role play.
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
I'd like to make a complaint, please. Don't care. Well, I am staying at the hotel. I don't care. It's not my shift. Well, you're an ambassador for the hotel.
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
I think you'll care when I tell you what the complaint is.
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
I think there's been a rape up there. I've got his attention. Get their attention. OK?
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
..and the way that we would deal with somebody... Maybe I should, as I thought, I should play the hotel manager, cos I'm used to that. I phased you. But you have a go, see if you can phase me, OK?
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
There is no 362 in this hotel. Sometimes the complaints will be false. OK? Good.
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Of course, because he wants to be top dog. He wants to be the center of attention. He couldn't, you know, he hires this guy, but then he wants to be in charge. So he's just a child. You know, it's his football and he's got to be, you know, the most important player.
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
She's dead. She's not dead. Long time later, I see a cowboy crying. He says, hey, buddy, what can I do? He says, I lived a good life. I had 1,000 women. I said, well, why the tears? He says, because none of them was you. What, you? No, he's looking at a photograph. Of you? No, of his girlfriend. The video was a show. He sounds a bit gay. It's not gay.
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Yeah, no, of course not. No, I wrote those especially for the show. And Free Love Freeway, I'm fascinated when British people who've never been out of their own town start writing songs about what it would be like to cross America. You know, they might as well talk about his space travel. Again, the joke there wasn't that he was bad or the songs were comical.
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
It was the fact that it was so inappropriate. He's meant to be leading a training session, but he wants to show off. And I love that. Same as those people who take a guitar to a party. You know, it's just like, shut up.
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Absolutely excruciating. The white man overbite to show he's really getting into it.
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
And I wasn't 40. So I hope there's enough distance between me and David Brent there.
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
If you had to name a role model, someone who's influenced you, who would it be?
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
No, someone in sort of general life. Just someone who's been an influence on you.
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
If it wasn't your mother, though. I mean, it doesn't even have to be a woman. It could be a...
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Not your father, I mean. Let's take your parents as read. I'm looking for someone in the sort of work-related arena.
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
I thought you said not a woman, didn't we? Or am I...?
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Celebrating 20 Years Of 'The Office'
Embarrassing as backfire, isn't it? Oh, dear. Very flattering. Can we put me? I don't know.